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It’s so overwhelming that part of me wants to go back to bed and pull the pillow over my head. Wake me when it’s over.

LANSING - Next week is a huge week for America and what it stands for, a huge week for democracy and civil rights. It’s a huge week for all of us. I don’t think I’m overstating it. It’s so overwhelming that part of me wants to go back to bed and pull the pillow over my head. Wake me when it’s over.

I’m not going to do that. Too much is at stake.

The words we hear a lot are “unite” and “divide.” How do we find common ground to unite as Americans when we're so divided over the election results? Like many of you, I am struggling for the right words, actions and symbols.

I want to be on the “unite” side but not at the expense of supporting a society where your gender, sexual orientation, color or disability predetermine how far you will go in life. Hopefully, we can figure it out.

The big week starts Monday with the remembrance of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. To me, King’s legacy is that he gave us the tools to heal our divisions, to unite. His model of peaceful protest was derided by some of his peers in his lifetime but he persevered. Among other activities honoring King, a Lansing luncheon Monday will feature Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers. And if you haven’t been to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis or the King memorial in D.C., put them on your bucket list. We need to remember that era of our country's history.

Tuesday is the National Day of Racial Healing. It’s the idea of the Kellogg Foundation to "help heal the wounds created by racial, ethnic and religious bias." What will you do? Participating is as easy as posting a message on social media or putting a sign on your door. Our national conversation over police shootings of African Americans alone cries out for this discussion.

Friday is Inauguration Day. Whether you supported him or not, President-elect Donald Trump won and is our next president. I’ll be looking for words and actions that indicate he is taking seriously his role as a leader for all of us. I want him to be successful in protecting us but without trampling on what we hold dear. I’ve heard President Obama talk about the peaceful transfer of power. We need to celebrate the fact that the process works, even when America is as divided as it’s ever been.

Finally, Saturday is the Women’s March on Washington and Women’s March on Lansing. At least eight busloads of marchers and numerous individuals from mid-Michigan will join what’s expected to be tens of thousands at the U.S. Capitol to march for the rights of women and others. Smaller marches are being held around the country, including one at Michigan’s Capitol in Lansing from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. aimed at speaking up against hate and intolerance.

The D.C. march and its spinoffs started with a Facebook post from a retired attorney in Hawaii, upset about what the election results meant for women. It struck a chord with me, and I want to witness this march.

I came of age as the women’s movement exploded. I had opportunities that wouldn’t have been afforded to me without the work of feminists before me speaking up, challenging the system and filing lawsuits. Women had been in newsrooms prior to my generation, but they were mostly in the “women’s page” section. I believe younger women have even more opportunity than I did. They're fighting some of the same battles my generation fought, but not all of them. I don’t want that trajectory to stop.

Still, it’s no secret that women are often missing from the executive ranks, from boardrooms and elected positions and, despite hard work, don’t earn as much as men.

While President-elect Trump has dismissed criticism of his words and actions toward women and others as political correctness, I don’t buy that. Equality, respect for others and fair play are fundamental to who we are as a society. They're not the demands of an overly sensitive few.

To me, the march is not about partisan politics. It is about reclaiming the progress women have made over the last half-century. This includes the right to be considered for a job, promotion or pay based on ability.

I don’t have to reach back very far for an example of women’s rights denied. My late father, a WWII vet, was born in 1920 a few months before women established their right to vote. Think about that. This happened in my own parents' lifetime, not centuries ago. The suffragists forced men to give women the same voting rights they had. It happened less than a century ago.

Sadly, I don’t have a daughter or granddaughter. But if I did, I would be so worried about the messages they’re getting today about their bodies, their roles and their importance. Some of the rhetoric that surfaced during the campaign was horrific, appalling and just plain wrong.

The president-elect's apparent mocking of a reporter with disabilities also shook me – as actress Meryl Streep so aptly put it, like sinking hooks into my heart. I am the mother of a wonderful, capable adult son who marches into the workplace each day with cerebral palsy. To imagine someone prominent mocking his uneven gait poked the mama bear in me, big time. I’ve tried to consider and believe Trump's explanation that he wasn’t imitating the reporter’s physical disability even as evidence points otherwise. I just don't know.

Despite these personal failings, Trump won the election. It’s monumentally important to distinguish that, though voters chose him as president, those votes didn’t legitimize his campaign trail words that belittled groups of people, including women.

I hope the marches will solidify this message, and I want to be part of that statement.

We’re not turning the clock back to the 1950s. We can’t let that happen.

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Write to her at 300 S. Washington Square Suite #300 Lansing, MI, 48933. Follow her on Twitter @JudyPutnam.